Acts 3:19
Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord
I was having a great discussion with some co-workers yesterday. What we were bantering about was each of our particular looks or understandings of our own spirituality. While it was invigorating, and certainly tested my skills in the area of witnessing and defending my faith, it was troubling at the same time.
When I went to school winter break was called what it really is; Christmas vacation. Spring Break was called what it is; Easter Vacation. We had morning prayer, we took field trips to churches and the Pope's speeches were sometimes shown on TV in class. We had religious school plays, we talked about our faith in school, and for the most part, we all had a general understanding of the bible. As Bob Dylan once said, "The times, they are a changing'".
As I shared with the guys from work, what I found was that I had to spend a great deal of time explaining the most fundamental things about the bible to them to even begin to make any point whatsoever. Now I do not personally begrudge these guys for not knowing scripture; the problem was that I was assuming they knew. And that's my fault.
For all my life up to this point, I have been working under the assumption that a bible discussion could be had with just about anyone and you could interact with a basic knowledge of scripture. In other words, most people can name the four gospels; they know who Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were. They know the story of Moses, Noah Sampson and Jonah. Most people knew where the Jordan River was, who Pontius Pilate was, and what a Roman Centurion was. They had heard the terms salvation, 'saved', and transfiguration meant something other than what happens to the yellow Camaro. And yes, most people knew that the immaculate conception was not a pass caught by Franco Harris in a playoff game against the Oakland Raiders.
Today, we can no longer make these assumptions. The generation of children being raised today do not know the stories of their Christian heritage. The federally funded indoctrination... uh-hum, education systems go out of their way to teach Afro-American, Asia-American and Native-American heritages to our children, even dedicating whole months of time to the project. But no public school teaches (or is permitted to teach) the true heritage of this great nation; it's Christian Heritage.
The guys I was sharing with struggled to understand or take in what I was attempting to share because there was no basis for a common understanding. We hear much talk of being 'relevant' to our communities and to our generation. Unfortunately, to many churches today relativism is more important than truth teaching, and standing firm on dogmatic biblical doctrine. In other words, it is more important that they stay relevant to the current generation, than it is to be teaching the uncompromised word of God as dogmatic absolutes. The problem with this is that truth is always relative, and truth is what this generation desires more than perhaps any generation before it.
There is much work to be done. It will take us longer. The world will be harder. But if there is any benefit to e generation lost to the teachings of its Christian heritage, it is that the affect I see it having is that it is forcing us to build more intense, closer personal relationships with the people we are witnessing to. Just as Jesus did with His disciples.
There is only one thing that will bring peace and refreshing to this generation that needs it so badly. Truth. We must give it to them in love, and we must keep giving it to them as long as we have the opportunity to do so. We are perhaps the most privileged generation because we get the chance to do God's work in what are surely the end times. Let us not be caught with no oil in our lamps. Let us not be caught not bring at His work, or burying out talants.
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